and the universe yawned
by cartoon moomba
Summary: Her funeral is nothing like the movies made them out to be. After all, this is a love story. [Minako, Ryoji, Mitsuru.]


**Disclaimer: **P3P does not belong to me. Stanzas pulled are courtesy of Auden, Neruda, and Cummings.

**Author's Note: **The original version of this was taken down because apparently 2nd PoV stories are against the ToS, so the original version can be found on Archive of Our Own under the same username as here. I _highly _recommend reading that one, seeing as how this was not the intended version.

* * *

_and the universe yawned_

.

.

* * *

The day Minako is born, there is a storm outside the hospital. The grey sky weeps and the winds howl and the earth shudders beneath their violent touch; a cacophony of noise, a possible prelude of things to come. But thousands of children arrive to the light of this world in the same moment that she does, and she is not presumptuous enough to assume such things. But even so, at the back of her mind years later, she can't resist the thought that wanders through:

_Did you know?_

Her eyes open only minutes after her brother's does and she joins his screaming, a quiet wail that only grows louder the more silent he falls. Their mother rests where she is, exhausted but exhilarated and watching the two of them with sparkling eyes. A kind nurse has brought her a cup of tea at her request and she absentmindedly runs her fingers along the rim. Her fingertip dips inside a crack, a sharp pain that she instinctively flinches at – in the room where Minako is held, her breath hitches in a momentary pause of silence.

The second passes; the girl opens her mouth again, and begins crying.

* * *

.

_and the crack in the tea cup opens_

_a lane to the land of the dead. _

.

* * *

Death offers her his hand when she is six, standing on a road that is witness to the corpses of her family. Above all, the night sky seeps green and the yellow moon winks from where it is perched outside the atmosphere. This creature is the one all nightmares stem from, the darkness lurking in the collective consciousness of humanity that ebbs and flows between dreams and fills them with fright. He hovers before the girl with marble coffins for wings, and the abyssal depths of his eyes are a force that pull her under and drown with a crescendo of dark water.

He breaks every bone of her fragile fingers when she touches him. She screams, and he settles in the back of her skull with a satisfied laugh.

* * *

.

_in headaches and in worry_

_vaguely life leaks away_

.

* * *

His possessive claws cinch around her tiny waist as her body grows and expands, her legs becoming leaner and more graceful as she navigates the planes of life. At first he visits the human in the form that would bring her the most comfort, with pale skin and bright eyes and clothes that fall around the sharp angles of his bones. But the more she grows the more he forgets about who he is, becoming consumed with the daily nuances and details of her life; the boys who try to hold her hand, the one girl that dares kiss her when she is twelve and they are both sunbathing in her backyard. His sweltering jealousy burns a chasm inside of Minako's stomach and so she runs away from all of them, bouncing from relative to relative, all of them unable to handle having her for more than a few years at a time.

As her face narrows and her chest rounds and her hair brushes the top of her breasts, he tugs at the fraying edges of his striped ensemble and curls into her body in the one hidden hour where he can be real. The girl breathes easily through her nose as he presses his lips to her temple, a bitter goodbye whispered into the shell of her ear.

* * *

.

_and Time will have his fancy_

_to-morrow or to-day._

.

* * *

Ryoji whispers poetry against her swollen lips, against the protruding slope of her ribcage. _"The years shall run like rabbits, for in my arms I hold the Flower of the Ages, and the first love of the world…" _His lips travel lower still, and she bites her bottom lip in an attempt to keep away from the wrath of her dorm mates. His tongue caresses her and she give up with a gasp of his name into the quiet of the Dark Hour, the green light a baptism that washes her sins away until it is only the two of them on the bed and the yellow sliver of the moon. The snowfall outside continues its slow descent and the flakes paint the streets red.

He presses a kiss to the inside of her thigh, and she thinks of the cold touch of the Evoker tattooed to the skin of her temple. Of equally cold lips lingering there as she dreamed, so very long ago.

"_But all the clocks in the city began to whirr and chime: 'O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time…"_

* * *

.

_i love you as certain dark things are to be loved,_

_in secret, between the shadow and the soul_

.

* * *

The day that she dies is the day that no one remembers. Her human skin is a sieve and her soul slowly leaks through, two months as her punishment for daring to defy the gods. She inhales oxygen and breathes out strands of DNA, that special blueprint of her true self that will never get the chance to be passed on. Veins begin to bulge against the grey of her skin as her blood pumps overtime, her heart doing its damn best to keep her alive when the very _air _now has the capacity to break her. She is both a newborn child choking on the fluid in its lungs and an old crone withering away, in the grand scheme of things.

She's a dead girl walking until she's finally, well, _not. _

Walking, that is.

* * *

.

_o look, look in the mirror,_

_o look in your distress_

.

* * *

Her funeral is nothing like the movies made them out to be. The sun is bright in the fresh spring sky, a blinding blue and with nary a cloud. Stalks of planted bluebells and flowering hyacinths bloom in splotches of color amidst stone graves and marble statues; her casket rests beside a freshly dug grave, polished wood shining in the sunlight.

Minako watches what seems to be half the school arrive from her perch on the new gravestone and kicks her legs back against where her name is engraved. An illusion, of course – she can feel the barbed chains pulling at the tender skin of her wrists and upper torso, the stitches threading her lips and their screams into eternal silence. Even when she projects herself into a body that is ever youthful and mobile, the reminder of her immortality never leaves her. Auburn hair ruffles in the soft breeze (or at least she pretends it does, and so it follows) and the cold stone of the seal licks at her neck. She can hear voices begging, back at the place where she truly belongs.

She ignores them, and instead directs her attention to the sound of Mitsuru's motorbike. It cuts off at the gates (she can hear so much _better_ now, and so can she see and smell, but what use is perfection to her now that she's dead?) and watches as heads turn in the direction of the Kirijo heiress. The crowd parts before her like the Red Sea as she strides to stand before the grave.

Her hair catches fire in the light, and Minako sighs with just a hint of wistfulness. _What I wouldn't give to run away with you on your bike now, my love…_

Mitsuru's eyes fall on to where she is sitting, and the ghost attempts a smile. The redhead stares right through.

"_It was late, late in the evening, the lovers they were gone, the clocks had ceased their chiming, and the deep river ran on…" _Death quotes behind her as he materializes with no sound or shift in the air to announce his arrival. She glances back at him – sometimes he is Pharos, and sometimes he is Ryoji, and rarely he is Thanatos; but always a monster, hidden in the depths of his otherworldly irises. His lips curl up, and in the corners of them lurk the creeping darkness and the croon of dead souls. The girl grins back, the steel thread pulling at her gums and bleeding copper into her mouth.

"I feel like it should be raining," she announces to him and leans back against his chest. He is Ryoji for the time being, and the familiar heavy weight of his arms settles around her waist.

"What a selfish girl you are," he mutters into her hair, pressing a kiss there nonetheless.

They both fall silent as the rest of her dorm mates arrive: Junpei and Yukari walk together, brought closer by the death than ever before. Ken trails after them, hands buried deep in his pockets and jaw quivering. Fuuka walks beside him with her hands clutched together and her knuckles straining white against her skin, eyes set stubbornly on anywhere but the bed of wood and silk. Akihiko and Shinjiro are the last to arrive with Koromaru and Aigis at their side.

All look appropriately morose and heartbroken. They crowd around Mitsuru who has yet to speak or even move a muscle. She just stands there staring right through Minako's invisible breastbone with her beautiful red eyes glassy and wide.

The spot she has been unintentionally focusing on begins to feel as if it is burning. Minako shifts against Ryoji's body, glad for the solidity that he offers in their lives as phantoms. He reaches up with one hand and presses his cold fingertips straight to her bones and the touch chills the guilt right out of her.

"She will love again," he offers the girl, a hard edge to his voice that belies his jealousy. Her mouth quirks with amusement, the familiar churning in her gut starting although they are no longer one and the same.

"And yet you remain a part of me, branded into my soul," she tells him as his eyes flicker down to meet hers, knowing of the feeling that is beginning to spread through her blood. The hand pressed to her chest trails down to her torso and he splays his fingers over the thin cloth of her shirt. The icy touch seeps through the material and the girl closes your eyes with a pleased sigh, craning her head back and baring her neck to him.

He makes a sound of approval, deep within his throat and it is the growl of Thanatos. The echo of the monster inside of her body recedes.

"After all," Death murmurs, pressing a chaste, cold kiss against the papery skin of her neck, "This is a love story."

* * *

.

_Death(having lost) put on his universe_

_and yawned:_

.

* * *

The funeral is nothing like the movies made them out to be. Minako watches the casket with her body be lowered into the fresh dirt, safe and tortured all at once from the loving embrace of Death. Amber eyes are trained on the tears that finally fall from Mitsuru's eyes, trailing down her beautiful face and hitting the earth like the rain that never comes.

* * *

.

_it looks like rain. _


End file.
